Creepy Clown Robs Walgreens: Police

BROWNSTOWN TOWNSHIP, MI — Police are looking for a suspect accused of disguising himself with a creepy clown mask and holding up a Walgreens store at gunpoint in Brownstown Township, according to media reports.

The armed robbery occurred about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Walgreens store on Telegraph Road. The suspect was wearing a black hoodie, according to surveillance photos taken by in-store cameras.

The masked suspect pointed a gun at the clerk, who turned over about $400 in cash before leaving the store in what is believed to be a blue Chevrolet Impala.

Brownstown Deputy Chief Robert Matthews told The News-Herald the suspect also pointed the gun at nearby customers. Police have asked the public’s help to identify the suspect, and anyone with information is asked to call Detective Sgt. Bill Huddleston, at (734) 675-1300, ext. 1134.

Though the suspect wasn’t dressed in full clown garb, clown sightings are on the uptick in Metro Detroit, including a clown captured on video in Clinton Township over the weekend. And in Troy on Tuesday, a student dressed in a clown suit and wielding a baseball bat was banned from school property.

Creepy Clowns in Michigan

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• Creepy Clown Craze: Troy Police Warn of Clown on School Property

The creepy clown craze is spreading with lightning speed across the country and earning a place in urban legend.

The first creepy clown report was in South Carolina in mid-August when a group of children told a sinister tale of clowns living in an abandoned house in the woods and trying to entice them with money to follow them into the woods, The New York Times reported. Police weren’t sure at the time if the sightings were real or the product of children’s imaginations.

There have been other reports in Michigan, including confirmed sightings in Big Rapids and Port Huron, and there may have been one in Lapeere.

Police are getting serious about the epidemic of creepy clown reports that have resulted in school lockdowns in Reading, Ohio and Alabama.

Experts have weighed in with some possible explanations. David G. Myers, a professor of psychology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, told The New York Times the reports, which he called “mass hysteria,” play to people’s fears.

Jason D. Seacat, an associate professor of psychology at Western New England University in Springfield, Massachusetts, said people who perpetuate the hoax with reports may just want to be part of a national news event.

“Since the event appears to be difficult to verify, the claim that one has had such an encounter is easier to make and relatively free from the risk of being called out as a fraud,” he said in an email to The Times. “So, low risk of being called out for lying and the benefit of positive attention for reporting such a claim may motivate some people to lie.”

After similar phenomena occurred in the 1980s in Boston, Loren Coleman, a cryptozoologist who studies the folklore behind mythical beasts such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, developed “The Phantom Clown Theory,” which chalked it up to mass hysteria, usually as a result of children’s reports, CNN reported.

Children aren’t that fond of clowns to begin with, according to a 2008 study in England that concluded decorating children’s wards in hospitals with clown images may give already ill children the heebie-jeebies.

“As adults we make assumptions about what works for children,” Dr. Penny Curtis, a researcher with the University of Sheffield, told BBC at the time. “We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable.”

In the United States, fear of clowns may have been sparked by 1970s serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who had a children’s party gig as “Pogo the Clown” and also painted clown pictures. Scary movie clowns followed, including Pennywise, the clown from Stephen King’s 1990 movie “It.”

Image courtesy of Brownstown Township police